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The arid lands across the Western United States offer excellent natural conditions for generating electricity from the sun. However, for many years large-scale solar development was largely confined to California, Arizona, New Mexico, Nevada and Colorado, with limited activity in other states.

The Sweetwater Solar plant is a project of 174 Power Global, the project development subsidiary of Hanwha Q Cells. The developer holds a 20-year power contract with Rocky Mountain Power, a subsidiary of Pacificorp, for the output of a 102 MW-DC/80 MW-AC project to be built on the site.

The project is only 2.5 miles to a 220 kV substation, and 174 Power has noted the good site access due to a highway running through the site.

The schedule for the project to be built is unclear. The BLM site features a January 2017 presentation from 174 Power, which offers a timeline that would have the project substantially completed in October. However, the company was not able to begin construction on that timeline without BLM approval.

Other details are also not clear. It is assumed that 174 Power will build the plant using Hanwha Q Cells modules, however project documents mention two different possible configurations, with single-axis tracking for the main option and fixed-tilt racking and/or tracking for an alternative site configuration with smaller-wattage modules.

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Christian Roselund

Christian Roselund serves as Americas editor at pv magazine, and joined in 2014. Prior to this he covered global solar policy, markets and technology for Solar Server, and has written about renewable energy for CleanTechnica, German Energy Transition, Truthout, The Guardian (UK), and IEEE Spectrum.

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1 comment

Sweetwater Soular has not been paying the majority of the employees that they have hired and it looks as if they are not going to. They have lost 90+ employees because of it And will probably continue to lose more.

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